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A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Boston Globe–Horn Book Poetry Award Winner
An "imaginative and moving" (The Horn Book, starred review) portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by ALSC Children's Literature Legacy Award winner Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.
I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the state's preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that ain't yet been told.
Till now.
Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford's ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.
Carole's poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jeffery's evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mother's homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jeffery's family, but of countless other Black families in America.
A Boston Globe–Horn Book Poetry Award Winner
An "imaginative and moving" (The Horn Book, starred review) portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by ALSC Children's Literature Legacy Award winner Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.
I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the state's preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that ain't yet been told.
Till now.
Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford's ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.
Carole's poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jeffery's evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mother's homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jeffery's family, but of countless other Black families in America.
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Reviews
"Janina Edwards and Leon Nixon deliver the poems Weatherford composed as she journeyed, literally and figuratively, to understand her family history. In particular, she renders how its power and continuity were interrupted by the horrors of enslavement by the Lloyd family on their Maryland plantation. Both narrators are dedicated to emphasizing line breaks and carefully chosen words that evoke ima
Janina Edwards and Leon Nixon deliver the poems Weatherford composed as she journeyed, literally and figuratively, to understand her family history. In particular, she renders how its power and continuity were interrupted by the horrors of enslavement by the Lloyd family on their Maryland plantation. Both narrators are dedicated to emphasizing line breaks and carefully chosen words that evoke imag
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